Full title: 2,000 to 10,000: How to Write Faster, Write Better, and Write More of What You Love.
Rachel Aaron is a professional full-time author of fantasy and science fiction. A few years ago, she did some analysis and self-examination of her writing habits and techniques and managed to successfully apply some theories to take her writing from 2,000 words a day to 10,000 words a day.
Rachel first published most of the information in this book as a series of blog posts, and honestly, if all you’re interested in is the ‘how she did it’ bit of the 2k to 10k, you might as well read the original blog post here or indeed just the 10% sample of this book. I won’t give it away here, but it’s a method which is both blindingly simple and not at all obvious unless you’ve done some ruthless self-examination, as Rachel has. I already track my writing time, which is one-third of her method, but applying the other two-thirds is something I hope to see tangible results from over time.
However, increasing your word count isn’t all that’s covered in this book. Rachel also goes into plot structure, character development, outlining, problem solving and effective editing methods. There are some really useful nuggets in here - in fact, one of the questions she posed “Ask yourself, what do your characters want most?” helped unblock me on one of my current works in progress, which alone was worth the price of the book, to me.
I have to say, though, I’m not a big fan of paying for what you can get on the internet (legally!) for free, and though the blurb states there is new information in the book which wasn’t in the blog posts, after looking them over I didn’t really see anything significant. While I found the book useful, there isn’t anything ground-breaking and new in it, and I’d have to suggest you take a look through the blog posts first. If you find Rachel’s method helps you, maybe you could thank her by purchasing the book for your library and leaving a good review!
I’m going to give it four stars; while I definitely added a few notes to the journal I keep writing tips and tricks I’ve gathered in, I doubt I’ll be back to refer to this one on a regular basis.
